Noli Me Tángere (Latin for "Touch Me Not") is a novel by Filipino writer and activist José Rizal published during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. It explores perceived inequities in law and practice in terms of the treatment by the ruling government and the Spanish Catholic friars of the resident peoples in the late-19th century.
Originally written by Rizal in Spanish, the book has since been more commonly published and read in the Philippines in either Tagalog (the major indigenous language), or English. The Rizal Law requires Noli and its sequel, El filibusterismo, to be read by all high school students throughout the country. Noli is studied in Grade 9 and in Grade 10. The two novels are widely considered to be the national epic of the Philippines. They have been adapted in many forms, such as operas, musicals, plays, and other forms of art.
The title originates from the Biblical passage John 20:13-17. In Rizal's time, it also referred to cancers that occurred on the face, particularly cancers of the eyelid; touching such lesions irritated them, causing pain. As an ophthalmologist, Rizal was familiar with the cancer and the name. He is explicit about the connection in the novel's dedication, which begins: ('To my country') and continues with "...a cancer of so malignant a character that the least touch irritates it and awakens in it the sharpest pains." Rizal probes the cancers of Filipino society. Early English translations of the novel used different titles, such as An Eagle Flight (1900) and The Social Cancer (1912), but more recent English translations use the original title.
Background
José Rizal, a Filipino nationalist and polymath, conceived the idea of writing a novel that would expose the backwardness and lack of progress of Philippine society because of the burden of colonization. According to historian Carlos Quirino, the novel bears similarities in terms of characterization and plot to the Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós' "Doña Perfecta". Rizal intended to express the way Filipino culture was perceived to be backward, anti-progress, anti-intellectual, and not conducive to the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. At the time he was a student of medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid.
Other Filipinos were also working or studying in Madrid, which as the capital of Spain was the center of culture and universities. At a gathering on January 2, 1884, of friends at the house of Pedro A. Paterno, Rizal proposed that a group of Filipinos should collaborate on a novel about the Philippines. His proposal was unanimously approved by those present, among whom were Pedro, Máximo Viola and Antonio Paterno, Graciano López Jaena, Evaristo Aguirre, Eduardo de Lete, Julio Llorente, and Valentin Ventura. However, they never got into the project. Although agreeing to help, none of the others wrote anything. Initially, Rizal planned for the novel to encompass all phases of Filipino life, but most of his friends, all young males, wanted to write about women. Rizal saw that his companions spent more time gambling and flirting with Spanish women than writing. Because of this, he decided to draft the novel alone.
Plot
Crisóstomo Ibarra, the mestizo son of the recently deceased Don Rafael Ibarra, is returning to San Diego town in Laguna after seven years of study in Europe. Kapitán Tiago, a family friend, invites him to a reunion party in Manila. At the party Crisóstomo meets Padre Dámaso who was San Diego's parish priest when Crisóstomo left for Europe. Dámaso treats Crisóstomo with hostility to the surprise of the young man who regarded the priest as his father's friend. Later as Crisóstomo was walking back to his hotel, Lieutenant Guevara, another friend of his father, informs him that Don Rafael may have been killed for political reasons and Dámaso may have been involved. Guevara warns him to be careful.
The following day Crisóstomo returns to Tiago's home to meet with his childhood sweetheart, Tiago's daughter María Clara. As the two flirt and reminisce, María reads back to him a part of his farewell letter on his discussion with his father about the state of the country. Ibarra excuses himself eventually as it was time to go to San Diego.